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#NeverReformConservatism at the Wall Street Journal

March 29, 2016 2:13 pmMarch 29, 2016 2:13 pm

I see that the Wall Street Journal editorial page has risen to the defense of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s relatively muted response to Trumpism, and what they’ve come up with is quite … revealing. In my deliberately tart critique of Ryan and the rest of the G.O.P. leadership, I suggested that he and other prominent conservatives were taking a “first, change nothing; second, do nothing” approach to the challenge of Trumpism, and essentially lying still and hoping the danger would pass over. The Journal’s counter-argument is a straightforward endorsement of exactly that approach: Trumpism too shall pass, the editorial avers, and in the mean time the important thing is to maintain the purity of Journal-approved conservatism, and to refuse any aid and comfort to all those deviationists and splittists who think that the party might not have exactly the right economic agenda for the voters and the times.

To #NeverTrump conservatives, then, the Journal offers at best an eyeroll at their passion; the important thing, now and always, is to be #NeverReformConservatism.

Do I exaggerate? Let’s work our way through the editorial, which defends the House Speaker against “a cast of conservative intellectuals who don’t like Mr. Ryan because he continues to believe in the Ronald Reagan-Jack Kemp vision of a tax-reforming, free-market GOP that focuses on economic growth.”

This description is, to begin with, absurd, since if the “cast” of intellectuals they have in mind is larger than just yours truly — though if I may be a little immodest, I do believe that I’m the primary target of the piece — it presumably includes figures like Yuval Levin and Jim Pethokoukis, who between them have written more words in praise of Ryan over the years than I can count … but I digress.

These nefarious intellectuals, the Journal continues, would “love to volunteer Mr. Ryan for a kamikaze political mission that leaves someone else to pick up the rubble in 2020.” That’s because we’re scheming to replace the pure faith of Kemp and Reagan with “a policy mix to address income inequality and promote redistribution … rather than aiming for faster growth” (again not quite an accurate description but what do you expect from an editorial too smug to even name the people it’s criticizing?), an agenda which Marco Rubio supposedly went all-in for this year (never mind that his tax plan also catered heavily to the Journal’s idées fixes and his Kempism on immigration clearly helped keep him from the nomination), and which we hope to impose on the party as a whole once we’ve sent Ryan spiraling into the U.S.S. Donald Trump.

But Ryan is too smart for our machinations:

Mr. Ryan is doing fine on his own … The Speaker hasn’t hesitated to condemn Mr. Trump’s bad ideas on the merits as they arise, including his Muslim travel ban. But Mr. Ryan also has other obligations, not least protecting the GOP from larger damage this election year.

Start with his role as chairman of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, which could be contested for the first time in decades. He’s officially neutral, and he’ll undermine his credibility and impartiality if he joins the never-Trump clique—especially when the Trump campaign is already warning of riots and building a stabbed-in-the-back narrative if their man doesn’t get the nomination.

If Mr. Trump is the nominee, then Mr. Ryan must defend his party’s best interests. This means above all protecting the House majority that polls show a Trump nomination could imperil. If Mrs. Clinton is elected President and Chuck Schumer runs the Senate, a GOP House is the only defense against a policy repeat of 2009-2010. Mr. Ryan can’t simply write off the GOP nominee and the millions of votes Mr. Trump has won.

The House GOP’s role will also be crucial if Mr. Trump wins in November. The businessman has no fixed principles we can detect, and a GOP Congress would have to steer him away from his worst instincts on trade, immigration and isolationism.

This is, I must say, some ripely delusional stuff. Ryan has to appear neutral because Trump is threatening riots? I’m old enough to remember when the Journal editorial page opposed appeasement! Ryan shouldn’t risk any kind of rupture because if Trump is the nominee a Republican civil war might cost the G.O.P. the House? Trump as the nominee is itself the thing that might cost the GOP the House! Ryan should stand ready to “steer” a President Trump away from “his worst instincts”? I mean, there isn’t going to be a President Trump … but if there were, what does it say about the Journal’s editorial page, allegedly a bastion of liberty and cosmopolitan conservatism, that it wants the heir of Kemp and Reagan to keep his options open and his hands undirtied with #neverTrumpism, just in case he might get the chance to help an illiberal race-baiting violence-abetting war crimes-endorsing demagogue pass, I dunno, the biggest supply-side tax cut in the history of the Laffer Curve?

What it says is that the Journal has its eyes on the real enemy here. Say what you will about Trump’s protectionist “Bush lied, people died” white identity politics, at least he didn’t endorse a larger child tax credit:

The irony is that many of the same pundits now demanding that Mr. Ryan become their sword against Mr. Trump also praised the New Yorker last summer for his challenge to GOP orthodoxy. These former Trump apologists claimed the GOP should absorb his rage against the status quo. Instead of income-tax rate cuts, get behind family-friendly tax credits. Make peace with the entitlement state. Restrict trade and immigration allegedly to lift blue-collar wages. Alas for these would-be king-makers, Mr. Trump doesn’t take much advice.

Projection is a remarkable thing. For the record: The early anti-anti-Trumpism of certain reform conservatives (my own and to some extent others) largely consisted of comparing Trump to George Wallace and wishing for a Nixon, and the adaptationist “advice” we gave was entirely directed at other Republican politicians, not the Donald. Meanwhile as Trump’s demagoguery escalated it was the Journal’s longtime fellow travelers in the supply-side movement who explicitly warmed to him, and it’s the Journal itself, in this very editorial, that still seems hopeful that Speaker Paul Ryan can write amazing bills for President Trump to rubber-stamp.

Alas for these would-be king-makers … well, you know.

Then, finally, we have this:

The Trump insurgency has a long way to play out, and someone else could still win the GOP nomination. But whatever happens, Mr. Ryan and his political allies will have to limit the policy and political damage. That means preserving a vision of the GOP as a pro-growth, reform party that is inclusive and meets the challenges of the current era. Mr. Ryan knows how to do that better than his critics do.

In other words: Do nothing, change nothing, and hope Trump simply does his destructive work and passes on. And if the party is reduced to actual rubble in the process, well, the important thing is that the purity of a policy vision from thirty-five years ago has been preserved in its pristine, handed-down-from-heaven form.

The best that can be said of this “strategy” is that it aspires to follow the fourth path for G.O.P. elites that David Frum (if I may quote a splittist even more defective in his interpretation of Reaganism than the reform conservatives) laid out in his essay on the Republican Party’s rendezvous with Trumpism; it redefines “political victory” to just mean “what we have, we hold,” and treats the presidency “as one of those things that is good to have but not a must-have, especially if obtaining it requires uncomfortable change.” Better to reign in the House, in this theory, than to ever compromise your way to something more; better to hunker down and hope to live through Trumpism than to sully the purity of supply-side ideas and donor priorities with anything that might pander to all the “lucky duckies” in the government-addicted 47 percent.

But even that gives the Journal’s vision too much credit, because a “do nothing/change nothing/let Trump stomp around” approach isn’t even a good strategy for holding the House of Representatives, let alone the Senate (and farewell and adieu to the Supreme Court, farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain …).

No: It’s only a good strategy if your primary obsession isn’t the actual fate of conservatism, but your own power and influence within whatever rump remains.

Which is why there’s only one answer to the Journal’s strange brief against reform conservatism, its insinuations against all those unnamed “intellectuals” (hi!) who want to undermine Paul Ryan’s political position and conservatism’s future for the sake of a narrow ideological agenda: Physician, heal thyself.

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About

Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. Previously, he was a senior editor at the Atlantic and a blogger for theatlantic.com. He is the author of "Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class" (Hyperion, 2005) and the co-author, with Reihan Salam, of "Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream" (Doubleday, 2008). He is the film critic for National Review.